Lead Nurturing Lessons from the Street: What @jillkonrath taught me and didn’t even know it

Backstory: A couple months ago, we ran a sales summit. We got a ton of registrations. Our main source was none other than Jill Konrath. When my brother went through the traffic numbers, I was floored by how well Jill’s email did for the event. Great people, insane conversion rates on click through and form conversion. So I looked into it and there are some very simple lessons you can take from her.

Backstory II: I was trading emails with her recently and asked from permission to talk about her email campaign. She was shocked that I wanted to write about it. Of course, she wanted a preview but I told her she couldn’t have one. (Truth is, I hadn’t written it yet). The moral of the story is she is just doing her thing and cranking away. And it works. Lesson #1: If you just keep it real and try to do right by your community, you will be successful.

Backstory III: I am big into lead nurturing right now. We are hosting a lead nurturing webinar on December 4 at 10AM pacific with Mary Firme from Reachforce and Justin Gray from LeadMD: 7 Steps to Put your Lead Nurturing on Steroids. Join us to hear more stories.

Okay, lets talk about the lessons learned. First, check out her site. Look at some of the content. Then read below. Four lessons learned about lead nurturing from Jill Konrath:

1. She has built a loyal, dedicated following — More on this in a moment, but her newsletter list is incredibly engaged with her. How do I know? How about 40-50% click through rate. Ridiculously amazing. Go to number 2 below to understand why:

2. She provides an endless supply of free content — Her content is made up of useful, helpful tips fed to her community on a consistent basis. That IS content marketing. . Go look at the content, it’s information sales people can go use right now. In nearly every piece of content she creates, she adds value for her target market: sales leaders and individual contributors.. Books, ebooks, video, blog posts. Everything is for them. The end result is she has become a trusted, reliable source of information for the sales community. Thus, the loyal following.

3. She keeps them consistently engaged via email — Ok, lots of people do email and many people nurture well. But, a lot of emailers only send offers and send them once in awhile. Jill sends some valuable piece of information every three-four days. If you are in sales, you want to open her email. Part of success in lead nurturing means staying engaged with your buyer over a sustained period of time until they are ready to buy. Her audience is being nurtured…AND THEY LIKE IT! She has made her email a must-read for her audience. That is a big win.

4. She makes her copy personal and conversational — See her note in the email copy for the sales summit below: “I’ll be there listening in. These guys are good!”. That’s awesome. Do you ever see that in a marketing email? Readers feel like she is having a conversation with them and they have a personal relationship with her.

And the results are amazing. Her list is captive and engaged. I can’t provide you all the numbers, but lets just say most of you will be surprised on how great her click-through and reg numbers were. And that my friends are the lessons I learned from Jill. Below is the email she sent on my behalf. You will see how they create copy.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic and a co-founder of Topo. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter